MSX Emulator Comparison - blueMSX review update

The MSX Emulator Comparison has been updated today, updating the review of blueMSX to the latest release of blueMSX, version 2.2, which has been released March 19th, 2005. The MRC EmuRank of blueMSX increased once again, strengthening its lead in the MRC EmuRank Charts. Due to recent changes in both blueMSX and openMSX, currently the most accurate and feature-rich MSX emulators, the conclusion of the MSX Emulator Comparison has been altered as well.

Relevant link: MSX Emulator Comparison - blueMSX review

Comments (21)

By mars2000you

Prophet (2647)

04-04-2005, 16:38

Snout, thanks for your appreciation of the new features of blueMSX ! (debugger, trainer, keyboard editor, virtual keyboard)

About the Sphere demo : on my system (Athlon-XP 3GHz+), it works good on Turbo-R mode and MSX2/2+ 5.369 MHz mode, but the Sphere demo seems to request a perfect floppy drive timing : if you disable it, the demo hangs indeed on the second intro screen.

So, the Sphere demo is the brilliant proof that you must not always disable the floppy drive timing , although you are a little obsessed by that

By Google

By wolf_

Ambassador (9123)

04-04-2005, 17:11

heh, never imagined the sphere-night/morning-hackjob to be such a tight emu-testcase

By BiFi

Enlighted (4348)

04-04-2005, 17:22

The Sphere version snout uses is heavilly outdated. The emulator developers have more recent versions to test with. I also contacted snout about this, but he seemed not very enthousiastic about getting those since he has something different planned as a testcase.

By BiFi

Enlighted (4348)

04-04-2005, 17:23

btw, currently the Sphere updates only involve direct engine improvements.

By mars2000you

Prophet (2647)

04-04-2005, 17:30

A precision : to check how the Sphere demo works in the emulator, I've used the old version that Snout seems to prefer

So, my answer is really an answer to the test made by Snout.

By mars2000you

Prophet (2647)

04-04-2005, 17:32

About the improved version of the demo : the timing between music and graphics is perfect on blueMSX

So, another reason to use this improved version !

By BiFi

Enlighted (4348)

04-04-2005, 17:36

I mailed him those results as well, since openMSX has a timing issue with the fixed R800-only version. He thought the results were interresting, though apparently not enough to request these versions. Due to internal dicission Infinite will not release those versions to the public.

By mars2000you

Prophet (2647)

04-04-2005, 18:03

As the Sphere demo works in blueMSX, I must presume that correct MSX1/2 accuracy score for the emulator is 95 (as for version 2.1)

So, we have for the accuracy :

(8x95 + 2x100)/10 =96

And for the EmuRank :

(4x96 + 2x80 + 88,24)/7 = 90,32 %

So, blueMSX is the first emulator to come in the 90% area !

By snout

Ambassador (13693)

04-04-2005, 19:47

BiFi - Indeed, as I plan to run the same test on every emulator and already was planning to use Wings as a replacement for Sphere in a future test, I wasn't interested in the other releases of Sphere for emulation testing purposes. However, I do think that our visitors would welcome the improved versions.

Did a blueMSX re-install, Sphere works like a charm. Probably did something stupid with the settings. 91.46% emurank, indeed, the first to break the 90% barrier. Congratz, team blueMSX!

By mars2000you

Prophet (2647)

04-04-2005, 19:51

Many thanks for the update, Snout

A suggestion : why not use Wings AND Sphere in the battery test ? I think that both demos are complementary, especially for the music part, that is very different. On the animation part, Wings comes probably with a better engine (or a better use of this engine), but Sphere is really fast !!!

By mars2000you

Prophet (2647)

04-04-2005, 19:54

Hmm ... the score are updated, but not the part of the text about the Sphere demo ???

By snout

Ambassador (13693)

04-04-2005, 19:55

Before implementing a test, I'll always try and check if the test results 'matter' before actually implementing it. So I'll run a test of Wings first, to see what results it delivers.

Keeping Sphere in the test still would not make me change my mind on using a different version of Sphere though, as long as it's not available to the public...

By BiFi

Enlighted (4348)

04-04-2005, 19:57

@snout: The final release of Sphere will most likely be in the Wings version of the engine.

By wolf_

Ambassador (9123)

04-04-2005, 21:14

Wings (and Sphere as well then) are currently being updated with nice 'n cosy disk-change routines (which involves some DOS1/2'ing around)
And I'll add a handful of new frames in Wings.. to finalise the theme..

By Grauw

Paragon (1797)

04-04-2005, 21:34

Yaaay! Great to hear! And DOS2 support for Wings? ^_^

Looking forward to that.

By BiFi

Enlighted (4348)

04-04-2005, 21:36

@grauw: it would mean you have to switch OFF the 7MHz then

By wolf_

Ambassador (9123)

04-04-2005, 21:48

And you need more mem than 512k But I bet that's not a problem..

By Grauw

Paragon (1797)

04-04-2005, 21:57

More than 512 MB is not a problem.

But why the hell would I need to switch off 7MHz? That doesn’t make sense.

By Grauw

Paragon (1797)

04-04-2005, 21:58

(but at the least switching off 7MHz is easier than copying it onto floppy disks, although I would probably have to run it twice to realise that 7MHz doesn’t work :/ - yep, I still don’t understand)

By dvik

Prophet (2173)

04-04-2005, 23:31

Thanks for the update of the review snout

I just have a question about the following paragraph:

"Apart from that, whilst emulating, the options menu isn't always as responsive as one would want it to be. In fact, changing a few settings in the menu can be very slow from time to time, while changing a few options during emulation even caused the entire testing system to lock-up a few times. "

I know this was an issue in 2.1 but we did quite some changes to address this. That does of course not mean that it is fixed so I just want to ask you if you still have these problems.

By Vampier

Paragon (1589)